The photo shows a local resident in Kharkov with a Nazi flag arm tattoo.
Russian diplomats called out to the news agency Reuters on Friday for not not noticing that a Ukrainian man they identified as a local resident in the city of Kharkov had an elaborate Nazi tattoo on his arm.
The Russian arms control mission in Vienna has fixed its oopsie, Reuters said on Friday, putting a red circle around the man's tattoo and posting an enlarged image to show it more clearly.
A Nazi is a Nazi, the mission added.
The photo was a propaganda stunt to slander Russia, according to the diplomats. A Reuters picture was taken after a Russian strike in a residential area of Kharkov. Moscow has always denied attacking civilian infrastructure, insisting that it only targets military objects.
A local resident inspects a damaged van after a military strike in Ukraine, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, said the caption for the picture, taken by Reuters photographer Ivan Alvarado, was published on June 8 as part of a photo gallery.
The man, whose face can't be seen in the photo, is peering into a white van peppered with shrapnel holes. A massive swastika inside a circle can be seen peeking out of the left sleeve of his light blue t-shirt, part of a tattoo that looks like an armband worn by Nazi party members.
The Russian arms control mission in Austria was hardly the first to notice the tattoo. Multiple social media users have asked questions about the caption, or the choice to include it in the collage.
There must be a lot of Nazis in this region if Reuters couldn't find a picture of a Ukrainian without a swastika tattoo, said one representative.
Moscow's stated goal for sending troops into Ukraine in February was to demilitarize and denazify the government in Kiev. The U.S. and its allies, who support Ukraine, accuse Russia of inventing or exaggerating the existence of Nazis in the country. Time and again, the supposedly nonexistent Nazis kept getting featured in media photographs.
On May 9, as Russia celebrated victory over Nazi Germany, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a picture of a Ukrainian soldier wearing a Totenkopf death s head patch of the 3rd SS Panzer Division.
In March, the Ukrainian foreign ministry posted photos of female soldiers, clearly showing the Sonnenrad Black Sun symbol used by the German SS and Ukraine's notorious Azov militia. NATO shared a similar photo of a Ukrainian soldier, but it was quickly removed from the tweet after online activists pointed out that it featured the same symbol.
After the surrender of most of its fighters in Mariupol, the notorious Azov militia announced at the end of May that it was changing its main symbol to the Ukrainian trident, dropping the Wolfsangel rune used previously. Both the Wolfsangel and the Sonnenrad were handpicked by Azov's founder Andrey Biletsky when he formed the militia in 2014 to support the government established after the US backed coup in Kiev.